These teens really touched my heart with their devotion to Jesus.
They decided to use their time off from school for the Lord. So they walked about 3 miles (5KM) to my home to get some church fliers for evangelism, because they didn’t have money for public transportation (jeepneys).
They were going to walk back home, but I insisted that they take some jeepney money.
When they were going to leave, it started raining hard, so I wanted to pay for a taxi (about P180 or $3.40), because riding jeepneys involves waiting outside each time you change. They insisted no, that this was part of their commitment to the Lord. Besides, they said, they had an umbrella. One umbrella for four girls, and they were grateful! But they did allow me to lend them the umbrella I had.
In all these things, I had to ask them questions to get the info, because they didn’t want me to worry about their needs. One more question I asked was “Are you hungry?” They all admitted that they were, so I told them to eat whatever they wanted (they wanted peanut butter sandwiches).
I am quite honored that all of these young ladies call me “Dad.”
I love being a missionary.
I was worried. None of my translators were able to come with me to the weekly Bacalso prayer meeting. Yet my concerns were needless—we all had a great time, and we definitely communicated well enough. They even said they were blessed by my 10 minute message (I teach briefly before the prayer time each week). It’s actually fun when someone doesn’t understand something, and we go back and forth until we get it. We all laughed at those situations. I’m glad that there was no translator, because now I see that their English is getting better, and my Visayan is getting better. I love my Bacalso friends!
Gina, Bee, and Catherine went to the northern province of Apayao for 2 1/2 weeks. They visited Gina’s mom there (Gina had not seen her for two years), but they also testified to the grace of God in marketplaces, in schools, in visits to homes, and to the neighboring Aeta tribe, which is majority animist–only 8% professing evangelical.
Marketplace ministry
We sometimes see laborers hitchhiking after their shift. It’s an opportunity for evangelism. Here Cathy and Marc share their faith with some men in the back of our Toyota.
Well over 300 teens gathered in a public high school during school hours to hear the Gospel. This is Marilog High School of Agriculture. Marilog is an especially poor area. It’s very rural. Some kids walk one to two hours to get to school.
The students were blessed by $1500 worth of groceries that were donated by evangelist Phillip Blair from the US as well as his teammates Thurston and Chihwah Kiang from China and James Louis from Australia.
Phillip, a fearless street preacher, stirred us all the more to do bold soul-winning. We rejoiced as he baptized three people on a Sunday after church.
He was kind enough to post this on Facebook:
If you’re looking for great ground to sow into, my new friend John Allcott is a very genuine, sincere man of God who is doing some very important work of the Lord here in the southern Philippines. Some really great people here. Please pray for their mission and church. Thank you.
Look up Phillip’s YouTube channel Torch of Christ for videos of him publicly preaching in places such as Pakistan, Columbia, UK, and Indonesia.
It was easy to predict that my dear friends would “surprise” me at 6am on my birthday. That has become a tradition in our church. So when I was on our balcony praying during the late afternoon before my birthday, I didn’t have any idea what was about to happen. Gina asked me to come inside at 6pm…but why were the lights off? Suddenly the lights came on, and 26 friends who were crammed into our 17’ X 10’ kitchen/living room area yelled “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” What a joy it is to know that I’m so loved by such wonderful people. They’re all busy, traffic is awful on weekday afternoons, and it was raining, but they wanted to bless me. And I am blessed.
Ten days before my birthday, Gina wanted to fill her birthday with serving others, because that’s her biggest source of joy. So she spent the morning evangelizing, and she spent the afternoon doing kids’ ministry. BTW, we felt a 6.3 earthquake on that day!
We have begun serving a very crowded refugee camp in our city. The residents are from various Manobo tribes. They have been driven from their land, and they only want to go home. They have many material needs and a huge spiritual need: According to Joshua Project, only 6% of Manobo claim to follow Jesus. Almost all of the rest are animists.
Animism is the belief that many unseen spirits interfere in the lives of humans. The spirits are both good and evil in nature and can be evoked to both anger and pleasure. The people are constantly afraid, and forever trying to appease these fickle spirits. All of the Philippine Islands were animist before the Muslims and the Spanish arrived hundreds of years ago.
My assistant pastor and best friend Oning teaches premarital classes every Thursday in our barangay hall. (The local government actually allows us to teach biblical principles to marriage license applicants!) He invites me to teach in his place sometimes. I enjoyed interacting with these nine new friends. (Here we are opening the class in prayer.)
Our longtime friend Jen and her family lost most of their possessions in a fire. Many other homes burned down. Most of the families are taking shelter in a covered basketball court. We brought food and the Word of God to them twice, and hopefully more in the coming days.
For Jen’s family, we bought groceries, clothes, school uniforms, school supplies, and a lot of wood for building a temporary home.
As you can tell by this brief (and very incomplete) report, we’ve got a lot of costly stuff going on. We believe it’s God will for us to be doing everything we’re doing. So we thank God for the generous friends who keep trusting us with their hard-earned money.
Here are the ways you can donate:
We could never repay you for your generosity to Davao City Outreach, but certainly “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:14)
Please forward this website to others who might be interested.
Please pray that God will send more laborers into his harvest field.
Please do not write to me here. Your message would get buried in the 1000s of spam messages. Please contact me via jgapinoy@gmail.com. Thank you! 🙂